I Who Have Never Known Men
By Jacqueline Harpman
Genre: Speculative fiction | Pages: 188 (paperback) | Publication Date: 1995
My Rating:⭐⭐⭐| Dates Read: 7/13/2025 - 7/16/2025
Trigger Warnings: Entrapment, suicide, death, food scarcity
I Who Have Never Known Men features an undeveloped world, flat characters, and a wholly uneventful plot–but maybe that was the whole point.
Rating this book was a fun challenge. It made me consider where my expectations as a reader meet a story’s intentions. I had to look beyond what I typically want from a genre and ask whether the author achieved what she set out to do.
Author
I was initially drawn to this title by the author. Born in Belgium in 1922, Jacqueline Harpman’s half Jewish family fled to Casablanca during the Nazi invasion. After returning home following the war, she studied French literature and began medical training before contracting tuberculosis. She began writing and published her first work in 1958. After four books, she became a psychoanalyst in 1980. Twenty years later she continued her writing career and went on to publish eight additional books and win several literary awards.
This backstory and the book’s short length was enough to convince me to pick it up.
Premise
I Who Have Never Known Men is a speculative fiction that follows an unnamed girl who has spent her entire known life imprisoned underground with 39 other women. Our main character (“protagonist" feels a little too generous), has no memory of life before the bunker and no understanding of normal society. When the guards disappear and the group emerges, she helps them navigate new lives in an unrecognizable world.
Characters: 3/5
The MC is stripped of relationships, emotional depth, and backstory, which made her less character, more storytelling vessel. While this made it difficult for me to connect with her, it did support the story's ongoing thematic question: what does it mean to be human, void of identity, community, and personal history?
Because of her isolation growing up, she struggles to connect with others–never seeking comfort romantically or platonically and lacking empathy. As someone who loves reading for intricately woven characters, this definitely impacted my overall enjoyment of the story. But, when I disregard my silly little feelings and pull on my reviewin’ pants, I can’t not recognize that this choice was artistically strong and thematically effective.
Harpman continues this with her side characters, making them one-dimensional and unchanging. While a couple side characters were distinct, more personality or depth would have given the story stronger emotional weight for me.
“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
Setting: 2/5
This story includes two settings: a bleak bunker and miles of empty plains. The worldbuilding is minimal—no hints of a larger society, no explanation of what could have happened environmentally that led to their situation, and no rules for how the world works (the characters aren’t even sure if they’re still on earth!).
This lack of depth is intentional, and serves the plot by mirroring the MC’s numbness and disconnect. This works artistically, but whether or not it makes for a compelling read is subjective. Personally, I needed something to cling to to ground me in the world.
Plot: 2.5/5
I use the word “plot” generously here. Searching for answers propelled me throughout the story, but discoveries—like the bus and the bunker—are made without payoff, resolution, or impact.
Again, I believe this was an intentional narrative choice. The futility we feel as readers reflects what the characters—especially the main character—feel when they’re unable to make connections or discoveries.
While this can be frustrating as a reader, it does succeed in reinforcing the book’s themes of isolation and pointlessness.
Themes: 5/5
It this story were a sandwich, this is the part that actually has nutritional value. Harpman challenges readers to consider the idea that maybe life’s search for meaning is futile. Their everyday lives show that sometimes existing and enduring are all we get.
Each page also poses an unsettling question: what’s the point of existence when you’re merely surviving? Inside the bunker, guards watching their every move, they have no choice but to live. But once the women are free, continuing to live becomes a choice—one without any clear reward. The characters are stripped of everything we typically associate with purpose. In doing this, it asks if meaning can exist in absence of these things. They’re left with the choice to continue living in spite of what’s happened, and to them, that’s power.
The story also touches thematically on physical and emotional isolation. The protagonist, having grown up without human connection or knowledge of society, feels a sense of alienation that prevents her from bonding with the other women. This absence of connection reinforces the story’s central question: what makes a person a person? Is it memory, emotion, connection? And if you remove those things, what remains?
“How much of our humanity is intrinsic? How much remains, when all else is stripped away?
”
Emotional Impact: 2.5/5
Like the main character, I too felt detached. Because of her emotional distance, it was more like I was watching things happen rather than feeling them. I couldn’t grieve losses or disappointments because I was never invited to care in the first place.
That said, I do think that this was deliberate. I know, I sound like a broken record at this point (or maybe in 2025 I should say… like a glitched-out iPhone?). Rather than trying to draw out emotions, I think Harpman is trying to show what life looks when there was never the chance for connection to form.
This story is unsettling is a quiet, contemplative sense, and you do feel this when you sit with it. It just doesn’t hit in the heart-wrenching, my-head-throbs-from-sobbing-at-2am type of way (my favorite, hehe).
Personal Enjoyment: 3/5
By my usual standards–character depth, plot momentum, and satisfying growth–this story is not something I would rate highly. But that feels unfair when the entire point is that those things don’t exist here on purpose. The book set out to be cold, sparse, and unsettling, and it absolutely delivered that. This one did manage to leave me intellectually intrigued if not emotionally fulfilled.
Overall, I liked it. I’m glad I read it, but I probably won’t read it again unless I need to write a thesis on post-apocalyptic alienation and the human condition.
Read If / Don’t Read If:
Read this book if you like stories that prioritize philosophical questioning, you want to attend a literary silent retreat, or if you’re in the mood for something existential and emotionally unnerving.
Don’t read if you reach for speculative fiction for immersive or dynamic settings or if slow-paced books piss you off.
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